Someone asked yesterday “Where is God in all of this?”, stating that everywhere they look they see struggle and suffering, that everywhere they look they do NOT see the divine. My off-the-cuff reply was

Go outside, look up. Day or night:

See the atmosphere? It's the only breathable one in our solar system and the only breathable one we know of in the universe which likely contains 2 trillion or more galaxies, each galaxy containing tens to hundreds of billions of stars. Most of those stars likely harboring planets.

See stars? The nearest one is Proxima Centauri at 4.24 light years away. Voyager 1 is traveling at a rate of 17.3 km/s, it's the fastest spacecraft to date. If it were pointed at an intercept with Proxima Centauri it would take over 73,000 years to arrive. That's the closest star, 4.24 light years. The farthest star we've directly imaged (MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1) is 5 billion light-years away. You exist, I exist, on this tiny blue marble in an effectively infinite space. That's where God is.

See the moon? it has given us the 24 hour day we know so well. It gives us the tides that likely helped make life prosper on Earth. It was likely made from a cataclysmic impact where something likely a twin to the Earth at the time collided with us and ejected it violently from the collision. That moon you see, men have been there, they got there with less computing power than a modern car has. They got there launched on a controlled explosion atop the most complicated machine made to date. They went to a barren, hostile, sterile world and looked back and saw the majesty that is Earth. The local rarity that is Earth. The only known body in the solar system to harbor any form of life, let alone intelligent life. That's where God is.

Now, go look in the mirror. You're seeing reflected radiation that allows you to see you. Through an evolutionary miracle that is the eye, something that modern cameras still can't replicate even a decent approximation of. That reflection you see, you, more than 37 trillion cells make up you. Those cells are made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that is roughly 2/3 hydrogen, 1/4 oxygen and about 1/10 is carbon in composition. Those seven billion billion billion atoms comprise a living, breathing, sentient entity that can not only live and reproduce but has the capability of creating technology that allows the splitting of atoms, that allows for complicated repair (surgery) of similar organisms, that can contemplate existence, that could build the most complicated machine ever to put man on the moon. That's where God is.

Hey dad, 1 week from today you’ve been dead 21 years. TWENTY ONE YEARS. I miss you.

You know, you’d think it would get easier to write these each year but it actually gets worse, not harder, just worse. I don’t remember what you sounded like at this point, what you smelled like, some days I couldn’t even describe what you looked like without looking at a photo. It’s not just you either… Joe, Nikki, Jack, Dick, 2 of my barbers, Mr. Pedigo, Herman and Mary, the list of the dead and slowly forgotten continues to pile up and I’m not even 34. You know, Mr. Pedigo sent me home with that camcorder when you were sick… told me to record you, told me to ask you questions, because he’d been there and was trying to help me save some portion of you… what did I do? Recorded my television with it… original episodes of Battlestar Galactica, ugh.

Oh yeah, mom lost Mary and then Herman some months later last year. In both cases her sisters didn’t tell her and she found out after the fact.

We moved to Plainfield like I said we were going to, it’s not Speedway but it’s not too bad.

I told you they remade Death Wish in last year’s email oddly enough I watched it again yesterday… that’s an interesting coincidence.

That man called Elon Musk is still a character, a couple of television shows in the past year or so have even had fictional characters that were blatantly supposed to be him. He’s a weird guy, he hasn’t done anything crazy like launch another car into space but he’s still pushing hard to make a spaceship that’ll take men to Mars. I think you were 16 when Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Armstrong hopped around the Moon, I’d love to see mankind set foot on Mars in my lifetime, our future is in the stars… ad astra and all that.

Last year someone was very nice to me and did something for me. A week or so before the race they lost someone too and I tried to share as much wisdom with them as I could to help equip them to deal with the loss and told them how I write these letters. I hope they’ve found some way to keep the memory of their loved one alive like I have with these letters. They are a really interesting person doing some neat things, and while they’re also an enigma, I just hope i was able to return even a fraction of what they’ve done for me with the advice I gave them. At some point they saw something in me and that’s so foreign and unusual or out of the norm, the past year their interest in my life was definitely a noteworthy thing.

I went the farthest from home ever last year too. At the end of June I was invited out to San Francisco, I had a layover for an hour or two in Texas on the way there. Within an hour of landing in San Francisco I saw a completely naked man walking down the sidewalk just out for a stroll. He walked by multiple uniformed police officer over the course of several blocks and they all just laughed. Pretty much everyone has cellular telephones now and they have cameras built in, the police just laughed at him and some took pictures as he walked by. There were road closures due to a parade and I couldn’t get to my hotel so had to walk several blocks and couldn’t find a way around the barricades so I tried to ask a group of police, while holding my suitcase, “move along, KEEP MOVING” shutting me down not wanting to listen to me… this happened a few times before I came upon 2 motorcycle cops “excuse me officers, I’m trying to get to my hotel, where does this barricade end” and they both gave me a good look up and down, including my suitcase, before one curtly replied “you want to go under the street” to which I replied with a quisitive ‘ok’ “No listen, you want to go under the street” and pointed down the road a bit to a sign. Turns out there are subway/train stops that release underground and empty to either side of the street.

Overall San Francisco was weird. They have some level of problem with IV drug users and discarded syringes are here and there on the sidewalks, I also saw human feces here and there on the sidewalk and some areas had a definite stale urine smell. It was a depressing experience, I’d never really seen homelessness before. You know what Indy was like as far as homeless, I don’t really think it’s changed much and the way it was out there was alarming and just sad. I knew it was a problem in major cities but reading it and seeing it first-hand are very different things. I had to literally step over people that were asleep on the sidewalk in broad daylight and from the windows at my 4-star hotel I watched a man sleep on the sidewalk until the morning traffic woke him. It was strange.

I was only there for about 2 days but I had fun. I didn’t get to see much but I did see the Golden Gate bridge, kinda, as I flew out. I upgraded my seat on the way back, I didn’t pay for the trip, so I could have a window seat and a little more leg room and seeing all of the desert on the way back was interesting and shocking. Wind power has also become quite a thing as of late and it was amazing seeing how many massive wind turbines there are dotting the country. In the nearly 21 years you’ve been dead we’ve done a lot to harm our planet but some are trying to retard the damage we’re doing and save us, some solar panels and those wind farms on the way home were somewhat refreshing after all the desert and homeless persons.

I didn’t pass the broker’s exam, I didn’t think I would though. I’m not suddenly successful or rich, I still have very few people in my life, I didn’t make it into the woods last year but I have the morel statue you gave Jack that one year in my bedroom, I see it every day and night as I get in and out of bed.. I’m looking at it right now actually.

I also went on a Nazi U-boat that we captured during WWII, U-505 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It was that one they had when I went up there in scouts and we camped at Indiana Dunes State Park and you didn’t go with us. They had it outside in a courtyard back then but some years back they moved it underground and built a big cavern of a room for it. It was neat walking through it, I barely fit through the engine room… I can only imagine what that was like with those engines hot and firing, diesel and oil fumes gathering. Walking along side it/underneath it was overwhelming, it was so big on the outside but very compact on the inside. You could even see bullet holes from when we captured it. It was amazing!

I doubt too much will happen exciting in the next year. I can’t get anyone to give me a better job, they all want degrees and I don’t have one. I can’t get anyone to take a chance on me because there are people that look infinitely better on paper. I can’t afford to do exciting things so I probably won’t have anything on that front but hey who knows, when I wrote last year’s letter I didn’t think I’d see a naked guy walking down the street or that I’d have visited California so hey who knows. Maybe I’ll surprise us both!

Talk to you in a year dad, Bun says hi!

Do not stand at my grave and weep,I am not there, I do not sleep.I am in a thousand winds that blow,I am the softly falling snow.I am the gentle showers of rain,I am the fields of ripening grain.I am in the morning hush,I am in the graceful rushOf beautiful birds in circling flight,I am the starshine of the night.I am in the flowers that bloom,I am in a quiet room.I am in the birds that sing,I am in each lovely thing.Do not stand at my grave bereftI am not there. I have not left.

For many years I’ve known that Iapetus and Mimas (moons of Saturn) have resembled the Death Star. Today we saw images of Ultima Thule as New Horizons went speeding by at something like 8 miles per second.

I want to preface this by saying I think YC is doing good, that YC has already helped make extremely positive contributions to society by funding numerous companies.

I also currently have an application in for this batch, it’s not a billion dollar idea, I’m not going to make them a 46,666% return on their investment and based on some rejection letters to others suspect incoming. That’s ok, I’m sure this post does not help my odds either.

As people are waiting to hear about the winter 2019 batch, articles keep getting posted to Hacker News giving tips on how to interview, one such as The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation is currently a top post. This started as a reply to that post but it became more, so I decided to make it something of its own.

I find it amusing that the above article, and most I've seen, are primarily written to app developers.

- “what about building [feature].”

- "What is your DAU as of today?"

- What actions are you taking to grow it? Homepage testing, funnel optimization, doubling down on a marketing channel?

I mean... YC has founded many companies that have nothing to do with applications, or even daily users... nuclear energy, shampoo, growing food, battery technology and manufacturing, energy storage, cancer research...

Then the typical buzzwords/phrases

- demonstration of the great synergy

- on-paper synergy

- What is your DAU

- funnel optimization, doubling down on a marketing channel

- Etc

Which is funny because the article itself says 'Don’t use jargon'.

I often think folks in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley/tech in general have any idea how the vast majority of the country, and world, live and actually do business. From throwing out technical jargon, assuming everyone knows what it means, then advising people NOT use jargon... to wanting everything incredibly brief 'one sentence, one sentence!' to being absolutely cold and inefficiently calculating...

It scares the hell out of me. We have all these 20 to early 40 something people, with millions and billions of dollars, with the bulk of the investment money at their command, deciding what future will be built for the world in cold emails and 10 minute rapid-fire interviews.

*shakes head*

YC and YCR have done amazing things but this machine-like, cold, calculating, no-time-to-waste, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am approach to life, seeing everything as a potential return, throwing in rejection letters things like "then it would be hard to for this to also be a billion dollar company" (again, that would mean a 46,666% return on investment) is terrifying.

I get it, YC needs to make money. They have investors they have to answer to that expect fantastical returns that beat the market but... for crying out loud... telling companies "you won't make us 70 million dollars in 5 years so hit the bricks" *cringe*

HOWEVER, if you look to YC’s history they “didn’t start it mainly to make money” yet now making MASSIVE returns seems to be the name of the game:

The real reason we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. We didn’t start it mainly to make money; we have no idea what our average returns might be, and won’t know for years. Nor did we start YC mainly to help out young would-be founders, though we do like the idea, and comfort ourselves occasionally with the thought that if all our investments tank, we will thus have been doing something unselfish. (It’s oddly nondeterministic.)

— http://www.paulgraham.com/whyyc.html

Who cares if it takes the average company a decade to earn you a return on your investment, it shouldn't be about money. It should be about adding value to humanity.

I'm legitimately afraid for our species. Our self-proclaimed champions for change and good are still driven by profit, and not just modest returns, but constantly on the prowl for that mega millions jackpot of a company.

I know this won't be found in favor by the tech and VC communities, I'm a nobody with a GED and a dead end job that gets rejected time and time again by companies for not having a degree. I'm a nobody from the Midwest that has never made a billion dollar company, I'm not independently wealthy, I didn't make the iPad-fruit-of-the-month app that made me 1 million dollars a day, I'm not a scientist.

I'm just a guy. A guy that's terrified. A guy that just wants someone, anyone, at YC to go "hey, wait a minute, let's pause and take a look at where we are headed".

I’m not saying YC is bad, I’m not even saying they are misguided (not entirely anyway), I’m saying that YC and similar institutions seem to have developed a very myopic view and have slipped into the same problems the generations before us have “profit profit profit”.

Take chances on stuff that’s almost certainly not going to pay back with dollars but with value added to society in general. Throw 10, 20, 50% at ideas that can make life better for people that don’t involve an app or SAAS and worry about adding value to people and not fattening investors bank accounts. When you’re on your death bed will you be proud you made meaningful contributions to society or will you be proud you funded the next “Clash of Boom Candy With Friends Meets Bagles: the best freemium game with built in relationship and threesome finding matchmaking!” ?

What the hell do I know though. I’ve not exited a startup and unlocked the achievement ‘fat bank account’ so no one cares what I have to say. I don’t have an Ivy League degree, or a community college degree, so no one cares what I have to say. I’m just a guy scraping by to make ends meet, with a bankruptcy, with a GED, with this silly notion that the likelihood of 46,666% returns should not be the deciding factor in what ideas are given a chance.

(And can indoor farming help us)

One very potential means of omnicide is losing our ability to adequately feed the humans of the earth which, given an adequate failure, could result in any number of armed conflicts that may even reach nuclear exchange.

To understand the importance of this issue we first have to look a bit at farming. Growing crops requires vast stretches of fertile soil, adequate water via rain or irrigation, adequate exposure to solar radiation and time.

Soil

Fertile soil is hard to add in quantity to a region but fertile soil that is already present can be maintained (it takes thousands of years to create worthwhile amounts of soil, what we'd need for farming), however, poor management combined with environmental conditions beyond our control, can easily lead to events such as the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. (For those interested on a drought potentially causing this again see the BBC article 21st Century US 'dustbowl' risk assessed)

Water

Where adequate rain is not available for use water must be found in the local environment. This can be from above ground bodies of water such as lakes and rivers which can be channeled into fields via irrigation or by tapping aquifers for groundwater which can and is, leading to groundwater depletion.

https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

Sun

This is something largely out of our control. The sun will do as the sun pleases. Rampant air pollution could negatively impact the amount of solar radiation reaching plants but the real threats here are supervolcanoes and nuclear winter causing mind-boggling levels of smoke and ash to enter the atmosphere blocking out sunlight for years or decades.

Waste

It might be shocking to learn that approximately 1/3 of food is lost to waste globally. This happens all throughout the supply chain and in our homes and businesses. In fields, crops can be lost to fungus/pests/weather damage/damage during harvest/inability to harvest in an adequate time frame. Damage can occur in transit from the fields to processing plants, from plants to warehouses, from warehouses to retail outlets. Then food gets purchased and not consumed, either neglected in your refrigerator (let's be honest, yours needs to be cleaned out doesn't it?) or prepared and discarded. One way to drastically reduce this would be to produce food much closer to the final point of sale, another to be more aware of the issue as consumers and try to eliminate the waste on our end by being more conscientious about our portions and by using as much of a vegetable, fruit or animal as possible (an easy way being stocks and soups).

Supply chain

Just-in-time delivery isn't just an issue for food, it's an issue for nearly all sectors and goods and is something we absolutely take for granted and should not. It is cheaper for an entity to order a good just before it will be needed than to maintain a warehouse full of goods to draw upon as needed, even when this might mean shipping something from China to Indianapolis by air in 1-3 days.

The problem here is large population centers often have, at best, days of food available for consumption and in fact, the world only has 2-3 months of food reserves. One method to address this is to simply begin maintaining warehouses of shelf-stable food near large population centers. Another is to grow the food considerably closer to the end user to build better flexibility into the supply chain and allow for quicker delivery of goods.

Water

As I addressed above one solution to adequate water is accessing aquifers, however, as illustrated above this is already causing issues in the U.S. and basically everywhere else. Crops require obscene amounts of water, for example, you need an input of roughly 594,000 gallons of water for 1 acre of corn with a yield of around 200 bushels (11,200 pounds of corn). Now obviously this water doesn't cease to exist but you do need to bring it in one way or another, often we largely rely on rainfall but when rain is scarce we tap those aquifers. One way to drastically reduce the amount of water needed is by having a closed system.

Sun

Again, the sun will do what the sun wants but we do have grow lights now (and technically you can use orbital mirrors to reflect more sunlight on a given area as was attempted with the Znamya project). While the sun is the cheapest option grow lights allow many benefits such as controlling the duration and intensity, allowing you to grow indoors or even in space habitats in the future for outposts on the moon or Mars.

An interesting approach and part of a viable solution is to look at growing indoors in largely enclosed systems.

There are three entities doing this right now that I'd like to use as examples.

Jeff and his wife have constructed a greenhouse on their property and are actively looking at this as a potential solution, Jeff's words say it better than I will:

Over eight years ago now, my wife and I started on a journey to design, build, and operate a sustainable energy and food production capability on our ranch. Since we started we’ve had quite the adventure as we try to develop our aquaponics system to grow plants, our microgreens for revenue generation, our automation equipment to control it all, the solar panels to run the system, and the anaerobic digester to help provide heat and energy. We’ve faced a lot of challenges and this year should be even better than last. Join us as we attempt to complete Hab 1 and accomplish our mission of providing sustainable food and energy to our local community.

— https://www.patreon.com/therealmartian/overview

His YouTube videos document the process of constructing Hab 1 as well as all of the challenges they are facing as they go through the process in a somewhat open-source fashion. His funding comes from his income and his Patreon donors.

Jeff is relying on both grow lights and natural sunlight to some extent. His energy comes from photovoltaic panels and he also has a digester which he can harvest natural gas from to run a generator on.

Square Roots is a company that is doing indoor farming in shipping containers. While I think shipping containers are an ok prototyping platform, and as an easily shippable educational/training environment, I think they are neither cost-effective or scalable for commercial capacity.

Square Roots does recognize some of the issues this article have, in their own words

Our cities are at the mercy of an industrial food system that ships in high-calorie, low-nutrient, processed food from thousands of miles away.

— https://squarerootsgrow.com/purpose/

They appear to be marketing more towards the "let's give people 'healthy' food" and less towards the "let's feed the world" aspect for their business model. I think this is great for raising awareness to indoor farming but largely I don't see it as something that solves a problem. They will, however, be adding experience to the indoor farming movement which is always a plus and I will admit that the amount of press they've generated has likely turned minds towards the idea that otherwise would not have.

Beanstalk Inc is an indoor farming startup that aims to grow produce at the cost of outdoor farming. They intend to grow food within 100 miles of their customer using zero herbicides, fungicides or pesticides and use automation for as much of the labor as possible.

This is a company that is truly thinking towards the future. While energy costs still make it hard to compete with the sun for your radiation input, controlling the environment drastically reduces water input and loss prior to harvest.

Their use of heirloom seeds is also interesting. This should allow for considerably more diversity, likely better taste profiles and allows us to maintain diversity in the event that a widely used commercial line of a given plant finds itself under attack by any number of pests. I think using heirloom seeds, along with genetically modified varieties, in growing is just as important as projects such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

I'm excited to see what Jack and Michael do over the next few years.

Closing thoughts

I believe that indoor farming via aquaponics or vertical growing or some combination of both is going to be key to our future as a species. One of the biggest hurdles at the moment is energy. We need photovoltaics to continue to increase in efficiency while their price continues to come down to make this viable at scale until a time that fusion might be a viable means of power (for fusion see Helion Energy, ITER, Tri Alpha Energy etc). Continue to improve LED diodes for use as grow lights should also see this become considerably more viable at scale. Genetic engineering may also provide a means for developing plants that require less input for similar or even higher yields and potentialyl even faster yields.

We also need to be very mindful of our current farming habits and very quickly make some changes both at a farm level for more sustainable practices, throughout the delivery change to minimize as much loss as possible and at a consumer level to only buy what we are going to use to drastically reduce the amount of food that needs to be grown in the first place.

I've got a meeting in a few days and I was trying to think of things I've accomplished in my life, and where I want to go in the future, what my goals are. I also recently just hit my 12th anniversary at FedEx Trade Networks and then it hit me... it has been a bit over 11 and a half years since The Wall Street Journal talked to me and Forbes interviewed me for their 'video network' on YouTube. Looking back at both of these things is incredibly cringe-worthy.

Sam Altman wrote in a recent blog post about productivity. Several points in his post really hit home with me and I'd like to address some of them here.

If you find yourself not liking what you’re doing for a long period of time, seriously consider a major job change.

Absolutely. Last year I began to realize I absolutely do not like my job. Not in the least. I'm fast approaching twelve years in this position, at this company, doing what is effectively data entry with a little bit of logic thrown in. I clear international freight through Customs, my job will almost certainly be replaced by a faux-AI in the next decade or so as OCR gets even better and software is able to process documents and accurately classify items in a shipment with little to no human interaction.

My job simply doesn't matter. I'm doing nothing to benefit humanity and this has begun to deeply trouble me the past few weeks. What the hell am I doing with my life?! What meaningful contribution have I made to society? None! The worst part is, I don't actually know what to do.

You see, I lack a degree. I'll be honest with my readers, I have a GED. While people often say I'm incredibly intelligent (I'd say I'm average, I just pay attention more than the masses) the fact of the matter is I don't have a paper trail of education. I lack that 'de facto dues card' (as someone recently referred to it as to me) that is a college degree. My company has made it painfully clear that I will NOT advance without, at a minimum, a Bachelor's degree. Pardon my language but this is utter bullshit and sadly is a societal norm and not an exception. Personally I'd rather have someone that loves the work they do, that wants to throw themselves into the job, that wants to be a difference as opposed to a Dick or Jane that forked out tens, or hundreds, of thousands of dollars for a degree that almost certainly has nothing to do with the real world because society told them they must.

But what do I do with my life? How do I find someone to give me a chance? Someone has recently placed some faith in me and it fueled the fire that was already beginning to grow in me. Now I just need to figure out how I can best serve my species.

Folks, we as humans face real threats in the near future. I honestly believe humanity is headed for dark and dangerous times. As the next generation or two begins to grow damage we've been doing to our planet since the Industrial Revolution is going to become more and more apparent. Climate change is a legitimate thing and is likely to result in crop failures, drastic changes in weather patterns, potentially wars over food and even potable water. We heavily rely on monoculture crops, on trucking and shipping food literally halfway around the world, we have cities that are natural deserts where water must be shipped in from hundreds of miles away (Los Angeles and Las Vegas for example), we have this illogical fear of atomic energy but seem quite happy (thanks to lobbyists) to pump mountains of coal into furnaces for our energy, we slap anti-dumping and countervailing duties on the import of photovoltaics to 'give American business a chance *eyeroll*' which limits our ability to harness the power of the sun. We are beginning to dabble seriously in the creation of Artificial Intelligence which when used appropriately could be a wonderful thing (imagine directing sufficiently advanced AI at problems like 'cold fusion' and engineering of crops/algae for more efficient food production) or it could be a very very bad thing like in the Terminator franchise and the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project in which an AI is created and given access to nuclear weapons, Colossus quickly determines the the Soviets also have an AI named Forbin and the two begin to communicate and ultimately become enemies. Colossus effectively makes itself ruler of America and threatens Forbin... "oh that's unlikely you say", yeah? Look at how much autonomous drones have been used in the middle east as of late. We also are in the infancy of a second Cold War between the United States and Russia with two madmen at the helms .

We have to do something. As a meat eater I say we need to get away from eating animals due to the greenhouse emissions involved in the entire process. We need to drastically reduce our energy consumption and move to 'greener' sources. We need to immediately do something about food waste. We need to start moving towards permaculture, vat grown protein (be it animal or algal). We need to support folks like Musk and Bezos and Bigelow that would see us spreading man to other worlds as a means of preservation of the species.

I need to be part of the solution. I don't know how I can help, or what I have to offer but I know, with every fiber of my being, I need to be working for someone or something that is trying to better the world. I've been losing sleep more and more the past year worrying about the world, worrying about how I am part of the problem. If any of you have ideas, if any of you are working towards solutions and can hire me by all means reach out. Keep me fed and a roof over my head and I will work, I will truly WORK for you, for our species, for our future.

Altman also says

I’ve been very fortunate to find work I like so much I’d do it for free, which makes it easy to be really productive.

I truly find it hard to do my job lately. It emotionally pains me. I think this is important, we need a world where people can actually pursue what interests them. The world would immediately be a better place. We need to look at things like Basic Income to allow this, especially with automation in the workplace rapidly increasing which is going to displace millions, then hundreds of millions of workers.

Altman makes another salient point

Doing great work usually requires colleagues of some sort. Try to be around smart, productive, happy, and positive people that don’t belittle your ambitions.

I will be the first to admit, I can be quite negative. I often don't believe in myself. A former friend had me in his phone as 'Eeyore'. One problem is, people shit on my ideas. I expressed to a friend I was considering pursuing a degree, he quickly told me I'd hate it, I'd complain about it, I'd get bored with it... while he was right that was not at all supportive (although it was one of many reasons I have chosen not to pursue a degree). Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated incident. My mother frequently doesn't support me nor has my extended family EVER supported me. I need to be around people that inherently believe in any given human being's potential. I need to be around people that are trying to be part of the solution. I know so few of these types though and I haven't a clue how to build a social circle that consists of this variety of person.

You have to both pick the right problem and do the work. There aren’t many shortcuts. If you’re going to do something really important, you are very likely going to work both smart and hard.

Damn. Do you ever have the feeling that the Universe or the Grand Architect or God or the intelligence that runs our simulation is trying to tell you something? I need to find the right problem for me to throw myself at. If anyone has ideas, I'm open. If anyone has work to be done, again let's talk as maybe I can help. I need to spend the next days, or weeks, seriously contemplating what I might be able to do and then looking for someone to do it for.

Roman society had Clientela, patronage. Patroni would sponsor clientes and this could be done many different ways for many different reasons. I think we need to look at this practice and apply it in the 21st century. We need to seek out and identify potential wunderkind and bright adults that have not had the means to excel and support them. How many Teslas, Leonardos (people, his name isn't da Vinci, it is where he is from!), Fords, Einsteins, Gutenbergs, Lamarrs (as in Hedy, go read about her life outside of being an actress), Watts, Voltas etc were unable to contribute meaningfully to society because they were disadvantaged one way or another? How many profound discoveries and contributions never happened because no one believed in them, because no one supported them, because they were too busy trying to keep food on the table to pursue their ideas and use their abilities? Again, see Basic Income. Perhaps Basic Income can be the clientela of the 21st century.

Altman then says

My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”.

Agreed. I use my Gmail inbox for this as well as my Google calendar. I think I'm going to give paper lists a try, get some cheap notepads or moleskines. For a time I was using Evernote but it is too easy to ignore or neglect outright. We all have many ideas, some good and some bad, but how many of them do we ever pursue? Lists, I'm going to take a renewed interest in lists. You should too.

Altman:

I try to be ruthless about saying no to stuff, and doing non-critical things in the quickest way possible. I probably take this too far—for example, I am almost sure I am terse to the point of rudeness when replying to emails.

While I can be quite wordy when I'm passionate about something (ahem, this post) I was told, after interviewing for a position here at work recently, "you were too terse with your replies to the interview questions. You briefly answered and did not expand upon your answers like other candidates" well exxxxcccuuuuusssseeeee me you told me you'd only allotted 45 minutes for the interview and I didn't want to waste my time or yours with some verbal diarrhea trying to to play kiss ass while I told you everything you wanted to hear. And while we're on the subject, ENOUGH WITH MEETINGS. I have, at a minimum, 6 meetings a week that add up to at least an hour, literally everything that is said in these meetings could be delivered in 6 emails consisting of less than 2 paragraphs which I could read in 30-45 seconds.

I'm not here to be best friends with everyone I work with, I'm here to work and get paid. Unless something deeply interests me, I'm going to be as curt. It will serve all parties well. Less is frequently more. The less time I waste 'shooting the shit' with you, the more I can get done.

Oh wait a tick, look what Altman has to say:

I generally try to avoid meetings and conferences as I find the time cost to be huge—I get the most value out of time in my office.

Thank you! Someone else has some sense!

Look, I honestly have no idea what I should be doing with my life. I know I should NOT be doing paperwork all day. I want to be interacting with people, I want to be helping people, I want to be working towards social or technological changes that will make the world a better place for humanity going forward. I truly have no idea what talents I can bring to the table aside from being able to process many ideas and concepts and linking relevant (even when not obvious) ones together. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world but I want to.

I'm not likely to invent some new app or technology, I'm not likely to cure cancer or solve world hunger. My bank balance is in the four digits so I can't finance the efforts of others. I can say "here's an idea" or "I don't think that's wise" or "I'm sorry, you are so out of touch with reality that you have just said the dumbest thing I have ever heard in all of my existence" or "yes, that's brilliant, what can we do to make that happen?! How can I help?!".

I truly don't know what to do. I need some sort of intervention, I need something to fall into my lap or someone to throw me at a task. I'm open to the ideas of anyone that might see this. I can't do my job anymore, I come to work and want to check out like Peter in Office Space, someone load up Tetris and pass me the electric screwdriver until I have a meaningful purpose.

I have some ideas for more blog posts that I will begin working on this weekend so stay tuned my friends. In the meantime, take a look at your life and ask yourself if you could be doing something more meaningful.

Well, dad... in just 5 days you'll have been dead 20 years. TWENTY YEARS. You've nearly been gone 2/3 of my life. Let's see, where do I start this year...

I'm inactive as a Freemason. I didn't even bother demitting, the Lodge I transferred to was a mess and never even sent me a request for dues until I was several months past due sending me a handwritten, in red ink, note on the back of a scrap of paper claiming I was late on my dues and needed to pay them.

I don't know what's going on with Doug but Curt lives in Arizona I believe with his daughter now. I've still not produced an heir and, since the girl that ultimately shot and killed herself, that hasn't really been anyone.

Adam West died last year. I remember the day I found out, my friend Jeremy broke the news to me. There's this thing called twitter on the internet. Adam had 'followed' me on this platform for years and years, he still does in death, he didn't follow too many people and we were friendly with one another over the years. I cried and cried and cried when I found out. I shut myself up in the bathroom and just lost it. I think I took it rough not because television's Batman had died but because when I'd come home from preschool and kindergarten you and I would watch him fighting crime on tv when we weren't watching Hogan's Heroes, The Beverly Hillbillies or Andy Griffith. I told Adam about you once, that you and I would sit there and watch him on the television. I miss you both.

Mom and I are moving to Plainfield in a month. Into an apartment. I still have the mushroom, your droopy horseman, and that droopy dog. They'll be proudly displayed in my room when we move.

In April I'm taking a test for the Customs Broker license. Depending on what source you look at, it usually has something like a 3-11% pass rate. It's an open book test, however, the material is 6,000-7.000 pages. It's multiple choice but yeah... I bought some training material for it but I really don't know how I'll do, once we move I'll have a little over 2 weeks until the test and I'm going to take a few of the past years' tests as the publish the questions and answers to see where I stand. I hope I pass it as it will be beneficial at my current employer and open up options at other companies as well (or I could even hang out my shingle and have a go at it solo but I wouldn't likely do that).

The remade Death Wish, with Bruce Willis this time, and I saw it last week. It was alright but the two detectives in it were terribly unrealistic.

There's also a man called Elon Musk. He builds his own rockets and is designing one to take man to Mars but earlier this year he took his electric car, oh yeah he makes electric sports cars that are pretty amazing, he took his electric car and put it on his newest rocket and launched it into space. He put his sports car, in space. What a world you've missed.

Oh! On the internet last week I saw a police patch that I bought. It was the same shape as the State Police patch, a similar font and a blue background but said Indiana State Police Free Mason' and had a square & compass on it. I had to add it to the collection, you know?

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